Canadian newcomers face many barriers

Many newcomers can feel like strangers in a strange land when they initially settle in Canada.

There may be a language barrier, housing and employment issues, inexperience with different customs and laws, discrimination, uncertainty about the integrity of the justice system and unfamiliarity with geographic regions and their climate.

Immigrants are hardly alone when they arrive in Nova Scotia. There are sometimes relatives and friends here ready to lend a hand, and there are groups and government agencies dedicated to making the transition from emigre to permanent resident easier.

In the Halifax region, the Immigrant Settlement & Integration Services agency helps newcomers with language skills, job issues and other matters. An orientation program — a series of information sessions — “supports immigrants during their settlement process,” the organization’s website said.

The agency offers pre-arrival help and programs for newcomers once they have moved here. Operations manager Gerry Mills has said services are provided to families and individuals making new lives for themselves.

Her office exists to “provide short-term, focused services to get them on their way so that they can reach their own goals,” she said in 2011.

Once people have decided to apply for citizenship, there is a lot more to learn about Canada before taking a citizenship test. And the process won’t be fast — it could take several months.

Test-preparation assistance can be found online and was provided in free classes, in Halifax, on weekends late last year. The Pier 21 immigration museum ran two eight-week sessions in November and December that were taught on Saturdays.

The study guide used during the sessions, and in similar programs across the country, is called Discover Canada: The Rights and Responsibilities of Citizenship. It includes sections on Canadian history, federal elections, the justice system, Canada’s economy and regions.

There is a lot of ground to cover and much information to be processed before exam time. (Adults applying for citizenship who are age 55, or older, don’t need to write the test.)

Elisabeth Tower, Pier 21’s education manager, said the museum’s citizenship pilot project accommodated men and women from Iran, Korea, China, the Philippines and other nations. Many students were singles, but “we do have a lot of couples,” she said recently.

There was a mix of ages, and slightly more women than men were enrolled in the program, Tower said. Pier 21 officials are assessing the project and may offer another session this year.

Nova Scotia attracted less than 2,200 immigrants in 2011, the last year for which statistics are available, CBC News reported this month. Seventy-five per cent of people who have moved to the province are staying, CBC said.

All residents not from Canada’s aboriginal communities either came to this country from other places or are descended from immigrants. Until Jan. 1, 1947, Canadians remained British subjects.

The Canadian Citizenship Act, which took effect on New Year’s Day 66 years ago, changed that. Canada became the first nation with colonial ties to Britain to have its own citizenship.

In the past, waves of immigrants hitting these shores tended to be from the United Kingdom and other parts of Europe. Many people have also moved to Canada from such Caribbean countries as Haiti and Jamaica.

At Pier 21, almost all folks who took classes to prepare for the government’s citizenship test were from countries outside Europe where English is not the first language.

Tower said if students are having trouble with English, they are going to find the citizenship preparation course tough to handle. They need to work on their language skills first, she said.

“Some of the language in the guide is challenging,” said Tower, adding that there are times when plain English could have taken the place of more sophisticated words.

“But (the Pier 21 teacher) specifically uses the terms that are used in the guide because those are the terms that may appear on the test. So we do a lot of that kind of familiarization, and explaining key terms.”

Some newcomers who have passed the government’s test in this province and elsewhere in Canada have reported the multiple-choice exam wasn’t difficult.

However, they found citizenship interviews with federal authorities to be somewhat stressful.

Tower said a student in the Pier 21 program who did well on the test said “she was very nervous” during the face-to-face meeting.

Immigration officials “were very nice — they were lovely to her and very polite, and everything — but it was a very, sort of, nerve-racking experience,” she said.